Former prosecutor Matthew J. King went to prison a few years back after he met a guy at a strip club who he thought was a cocaine dealer. It turned out, the guy was an informant wearing a wire and he recorded King explaining a plot to launder $20,000 of supposedly ill-gotten gains through his attorney trust account.
Some of you may remember this as the scheme Saul Goodman employed to clean up Walter White’s assets in Breaking Bad. Basic cable is of course not the best source for criminality tips — those should come from acknowledged experts — and law enforcement was more than prepared to suss this one out. This is so obvious that in Office Space they had to lampshade the idea of stealing a plot from a movie by claiming Y2K would throw enforcement efforts off their trail.
King tussled with the feds, challenging a conviction that wouldn’t allow him to confront the informant in court. The Sixth Circuit explained that the rest of the evidence was more than enough to sustain a conviction and there’s no special right to confront every possible witness — a holding that makes a lot of sense and will probably fall apart when the Supreme Court decides it’s inconvenient for this administration. When all was said and done, King was sentenced to 44 months and served half of his sentence before getting out last summer.
Today, the Ohio Supreme Court decided that this sort of behavior couldn’t be allowed to stand and indefinitely suspended King’s law license. It’s actually a win for King, who has the option to apply for reinstatement down the road, with his AA sponsor supporting King’s argument that his transgressions stemmed from an alcohol addiction that he’s now dealing with.
And generally speaking permanent bans are bad. People should always have a shot at getting back in the good graces of the profession and whether or not he can ever convince the court that he’s fully prepared to come back is a question for another day. Still, if there were ever a case for a permanent canceling it’s got to be “using your law license to help people commit crimes.” I suspect King’s going to have a hard time winning over future panels when he applies.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.